Agnes

Popularity, 1880–2025

girls named Agnes boys named Agnes

By the numbers

Total US births

159,982

Estimated living today

23,000

Median age today

73

Peak year

1918

Best rank

47th

Rank in 2025

1,016th

First recorded

1880

Girls / boys

159,517 / 465

How old the living Agneses are

born that year still alive today

Of the 159,982 babies given the name since 1880, about 23,000 are alive — 14 in every hundred. Roughly 3,100 of them are children and 15,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1952 and half after.

An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.

Where the name comes from

Origin Ancient Greek

coming from Ancient Greek ἁγνός (“pure, chaste”), Ancient Greek ἁγνεία (“purity, chastity”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Notable Agness

• Agnès Varda (1928–2019)French artist, film director, screenwriter and photographer
• Agnes of Rome (291–304)Christian martyr
• Ágnes Keleti (1921–2025)Hungarian-Israeli artistic gymnast
• Agnes Moorehead (1900–1974)American actress
• Agnès Jaoui (born 1964)French actress, film director, screenwriter and singer
• Agnès Sorel (1422–1450)French Royal mistress
• Ágnes Heller (1929–2019)Hungarian philosopher and academic
• Agnes of Poitou (1025–1077)Holy Roman Empress

People named Agnes with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Where Agnes is most common

• PA13,846
• NY13,073
• IL5,307
• OH4,977
• MA4,449
• NJ4,319
• MI4,082
• TX3,711
• GA3,516
• WI3,417

Relative to how many babies each state records, Agnes is most concentrated in North Dakota (3.9×), South Dakota (2.4×), Pennsylvania (2.2×), Hawaii (2.2×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 1918

The most popular girls’ names the year Agnes peaked:

• Mary
• Helen
• Dorothy
• Margaret
• Ruth
• Mildred

All the names of 1918

Agnes elsewhere

Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.

Agnes: births by region

Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.

By canton, Agnes is most concentrated in Valais, where 0.05% of children were given it – 32 of them.

Agnes: rank by region

In 2025, Agnes was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.

In 2019, Agnes was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.

In 2022, Agnes was given 2 times or more in 1 region of Poland.

In 2023, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Agnes appears in the lists for Province of Liège (105th).

Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Italy after 10 names, Poland below 2 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.

Agnes by city

One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.

Agnes among the living

How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.

Among boys in the Netherlands this is mostly a middle name: of the 2,355 who carry it, 8 go by it.

A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.

Where Agnes lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 1,945 women called Agnes were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.

Women: the provinces where it is densest

Listed in 23 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 29 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.

Related names

• Agness

Agnes against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

• Agnes vs Agness

Compare Agnes with a name of your own